


Love Me Today.  Love Me Tomorrow.  Love Me Again and Again.

by redstaronmyshoulder (CaptainAmelia22)



Series: Tumblr Drabble [15]
Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Marvel
Genre: Canon character deaths, Crossover, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2784161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/redstaronmyshoulder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're losing the war and it's a familiar dance they're both extremely skilled at dancing together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Me Today.  Love Me Tomorrow.  Love Me Again and Again.

The girl’s green eyes are the last thing he sees before he dies.

Again.  

_Son of a bitch._

"On your feet maggot!"

_Son of a bitch._

"Hello again Sergeant," he growls, mostly under his breath, his eyes locked on the men rushing about the Heathrow staging base.  Dead again. 

Back at Heathrow. Again.  

_This has to stop._

Where was the girl?

"Well, Major Barnes, got anything to say for yourself?" 

Sergeant Farell’s mustache never changes.  Over-and-over the two of them meet here at the Heathrow United Defense Force base-the last hurrah-and over-and-over they have the same conversations.

"Push-ups?" he quips, just as he spots the training center the girl can usually be found in. 

The only good thing about dying?

His arms don’t hurt after doing close to 300 push-ups every single fucking day at Heathrow.  

**

The girl’s name is Natasha.  

They’ve met on the beach nearly three dozen times.  She doesn’t remember him.  He remembers her.

Remembers every time she’s died at his feet. 

Remembers every time his guts have gone spilling over her boots, just as his vision darkens.  

Remembers every reluctant smile she shoots his way whenever he does something stupid that inevitably leads to her bullet shattering his skull.  

She doesn’t remember him. 

But he remembers her.

He remembers fixing her and yelling at her and every emerald flash of her green eyes as she challenges mimic after mimic.  

Her name is Natasha.  Natalia, in her long lost Motherland.  

She had been a ballerina before the war.

You can see it sometimes when she fights.  In the way she holds herself poised in the massive armor that weighs over a ton and somehow keeps them all safe.  She fights on her toes, chin out and elbows tight to her ribs.

She’s terrifying.

And yet, she dies. 

Just like him.

"Natalia, please…" he whispers in the barn at the very back of the mimic laden field.  

"Rose," she whispers, blood bubbling on her lips and the lights in her eyes fading.  "My middle name is…Rose."

They both can hear the mimics coming for them.  Can hear their strange chatterings and clicking limbs as they crawl through the rubble towards them.

They both know how this dance will end. 

"Goodbye," he whispers, her blood on his lips.  "Natalia."

"Goodbye James," she chokes, just as the world clicks to a close all around them once more.  

He dies.

Again.

With her eyes the last thing he sees.

Again.

**

"How do you know me?" she asks one day (the same fucking day.  Just like always.)  

Isn’t that the hardest question of all, though?

_How do you know me?_

He thinks about saying,  _I’ve kissed you, you know._

Or,  _I know what it’s like to get punched by you._

They’ve met for the first time close to four dozen times now.  He knows the way the muscle in her jaw ticks in irritation by memory now.  He knows what she looks like from the back better than he knows his own hands. 

He’s watched her face mimics more times than he cares to remember.

But remember he does.  

"I’ve watched the films," he says, simply for the forty-ninth time, his crooked grin in place and his dark eyes challenging the tiny woman standing before him, armor dripping from every limb and derision in her gaze.

She’s a force to be reckoned with, here and on the battlefield.

And somehow they both keep dying. 

London is where it all goes wrong.

The burn of the Omega’s blood is gone from his and he realizes that the last time he sees her eyes will actually  _be_  the last time. 

That’s worse than any death he’s died today.

The men join them.  Most of them are stupid grunts, but they’re good people.  He doesn’t care that most of them are going to die tomorrow-he doesn’t care because he’s danced this dance more times than he cares to remember and in the end?

She is the only thing that matters to him. 

And them, it turns out.

"The Angel of Verdun," breathes one of the men, his eyes wide as she emerges from the shadows, jaw tight and eyes full of worry.  

She knows how this is going to end.

Better than him.  

Today has been a rough day.

**

Paris is burning still.

Amazing really.  It was one of the first cities lost in the War and yet the mimics still lurk in it’s depths, burning everything remotely human they find.  

He thinks he might have gone to Paris once, in college maybe.  

It’s hard to remember though.  All he can see anymore is today.  

Five hundred different versions of the same day.

Natalia’s eyes always at the forefront of his memories.  

"Thought you could see the future Barnes," they ask on the first day they try to take the Louvre and the Omega.

"I haven’t lived this day," he murmurs, eyes scanning the burning Paris streets and the sewage stained water they stand in.

His words have a touch of doom for them all and Natasha just sighs.  

The mimics know they’re there.

And he doesn’t have a single drop of the Omega’s blood in him.

Natasha forces him to take the grenades.  

She’s always been the practical one of their impromptu team. 

"Neither one of us is getting out of here," she whispers, blood streaming from a cut on her brow.  "Thank you, for getting me this far."  

"I wish I could have known you better," she whispers before she thrusts the grenades in his hands and rushes towards the Alpha.

Her eyes…

Her eyes, tears making them shine like gems, are the last thing he sees and his heart lurches in his chest when he hears the Alpha’s victory roar from just a block away.

They’ve died together enough for him to know what loss feels like. 

"I’m sorry," he whispers as he dives towards the Omega’s heart, her grenades-her last gift to him-locked in his fingers.

Black blood mingles with scarlet for one moment and for the last time, his vision goes dark.

And like always…

She’s the last thing he thinks of before he dies again.

For the last time.

**

"Welcome to London Major Barnes!" the pretty Corporal says, her face vaguely familiar and her words echoing with a now standard sense of deja vu.

The men, every single one of them stupid grunts, rush by him at Heathrow and his mouth goes dry as he realizes that something…

Something has changed.

And yet, nothing has.

The war is over.

And as he walks into the training center, his nose pricking as a familiar scent washes over him and the Omega’s blood in his veins fires in response, he knows.

Knows her eyes are going to be the last thing he sees.

Every single goddamn day.

"Yes?" she snaps, command in every inch of her slight body.  "What do you want?"

Her green eyes are like fire and he smiles despite himself.

He knows her better than he knows himself and it’s only the first time they’ve ever met.

"Hello Natalia," he says, that crooked grin on his lips and the memory of her blood on his lips.  

Her green eyes spark and for the first time in a long day of deaths, victory tastes like freedom.

"James?"


End file.
